Acer 4672LMI-- Dual Core new machine

Hi there

I am the so far happy new owner of the above mentioned machine. http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/tm4670.htm Thanks very much to the forum and the guys who contribute. Using the guides here I have learned alot.

The machine has been great so far. I ordered it with an EZ dock and an extra 512Mb RAM and so far it has all worked well.

I have done the conversion of the HDD to NTFS, thanks to the guys who showed other users how to. I have also merged the two partions and am now happy with my new single drive.(Partion Magic)

The machine was purchased to fullfil a business need. I never game so the option of the X1400 was not attractive at all especailly as it robs an hour of battery life according to Acer. For all those who say Acer screens are not up to it, I dont know what you are on about, the screen is great.(15.0 SXGA+) You just need to turn up the brightness.

The battery life on this machine has been very good. In general use I have been able to get 4h30 out of her with, I dont like the way that Acer turns down the brightness so far once the AC power is removed so I reset it and the 4h30 is with higher brightness(60%).

I chose the 4672 because it had good battery life, a docking solution and a dual core processor. Now that Vista has been postponed more I feel quite happy with not going the 64bit AMD route, I feel that the dual core 32bit Intel sloution will be adequite for quite some time yet-- at least the average life of a laptop.

The new processor is quite a bit faster than the old machine I had which is a 1.8ghz Mobile Pentium 4. The super PI score at 2m iterations is 1M28secs.

I would love to post a full review but have not been able to find some of the benchmarking programs. If anyone can piont me in the right direction that would be great, I will post a review of the machine.

Why did i not go for the 4672WLMi that comes with the widescreen and x1400 gpu? Firstly i would have loved the widescreen, same resolution yes, but spreadsheet work would be easier with a widescreen. But Acer dont offer the widescreen with the Intel 950 gpu. The x1400 in the Acer applications dont seem to offer decent graphics compared to other brand machines, even others also using the X1400, so if you are a serious gamer then look elswhere. I am not a gamer at all, so the 950 does all that I require. It will work with Vista even the full Aero Glass graphics apparently, so its good enough. The difference in cost between the two models buys a nice widescreen LCD that I can plug into the Ez dock. The final nail in the 4672WLMI coffin was the robbing of an hours battery life. Battery life is nearly the be all and end all of a travelling man. I can you tell that the screen and card do great job of making DVDs enjoyable.

Cheers.